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Tag: storytelling

Inspired by Alan Wake and an old assignment back in Polytechnic, this sound-base story is about a guy being chased by darkness in his nightmare (in a metaphysical realm). In the end he sorta overcome it by shooting it dead in it’s face. It was mainly created using stock audio like the original Poly assignment while having a few recorded sounds like night-time ambient.

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Task 2: Power Down

Genre: Drama

In contrast to the first audio, this one uses mainly recorded sound with a few stock audio. This is more realistic and down-to-earth than the metaphysical one above. This one tells the story of an overtime office worker accidentally shut off the power of the office by spilling his drinks over the power sockets and forgetting to save his work.

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The audio was recorder using my Samsung Galaxy S5 using the Sony’s Audio Recorder app (download here) in my hostel room with the door and windows tightly shut and fan turned off. I chose this app for the high quality, stereo recording, and trim features and also being free-of-charge. The app’s recording capability rivals that of the Zoom Recorder.

At first I wanted to use Premier Pro but I keep getting error so I resort back to using good-old Audacity.

Special thanks to my BF Calson for the recording.

Research

For the Psychological Thriller, I decided to base on my old assignment from 2010 in Polytechnic.

References would be trying to get the mood of these thriller trailers:

It will in-cooperate rain, forest, fog and wild animal noises as the protagonist tries to escape from his nightmare. It will be based on my first assignment’s character, where he is in a total mental breakdown after his older brother commit suicide. The sound story will explore him being haunted by his fear and anxiety growing even more after his own anchor in life in now gone. It will be take place in a metaphysical realm represented by a dense forest with wild animals like crows and wolves.

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For the Drama-Comedy, I will base it on a simple screenplay I did during Narrative writing class that I thought could be use as a basis for this assignment:

Some additional info can include like the character’s wife and crying baby, answering phone call and tone of his voice, after being very stress.

Some example for mood and feel include the following trailers:

Though I don’t think it is directly related, I want to give the vibe that “things just couldn’t get worse, can it?” vibe.

Reflection

I find this assignment pretty fun and challenging as it is similar to making a radio drama, which I guess is getting popular again due to the rise of Podcast. It also taught me to pay attention to all the details inside a story without the use of image. It is like being robbed of the gift of sight which made it harder.

From this project I learn to explore a theme from contrasting genres and learning how to record my own audio even without a proper recorder. There is of course still much to learn, especially in terms of technical skills from using Audacity but I am sure the knowledge gained from this assignment will be useful in the times to come.